Pretty things... yorkshire terriers are judged. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty
You'd think I'd be most excited about the terrier class, since any normal person would be, but there's an amazing amount of pleasure to be had from the gun dogs. Besides, when I was on the tube earlier, I saw a picture in someone else's Metro of Bacon the staffie, posing for cameras. It sent me into a reverie. Oh, that my dog was a pure breed, not a mongrel! I would take him to Crufts, which began yesterday, and he would do his new trick for them, and all the photographers would gasp in wonder, and one or two of them might cry. It is an ancient and eternal dream of the most basic wish-fulfilment: glory for me and mine. What a simple creature I am; I thought I was dead sophisticated but in fact all I've done is divert my feelings of self-love onto my dog.
Sorry, back to the gun dog class. I was always put off this section by the fact that a lot of them are spaniels, for which I have no great love: that's all changed since my very good friend got a cocker and made a new friend with a field spaniel.
I have to admit I've been coming round to the springer for ages now so, over time, a whole new avenue of dog love has opened up to me. I'll never be that impressed by them, though, as beasts of pure physical perfection. You wouldn't watch a spaniel on the hunt and be astonished by its grace, I don't think.
But I really do get profound feelings of awe when I see the weimaraner and especially the viszla in action. Hungarian vizslas are beautiful creatures, coppery coloured and smaller than weimeraners. There used to be one next door to my sister's office, and her Italian colleague once saw him out the window and sighed: "he so beautiful! Even his bollocks are beautiful!".
But no viszla has won the gun dog category (retrievers, main choice of the unimaginative-posh, hold a lot of sway, as they did last night) since about 1999. I remember it because there was a pub in Kensington that took dogs (which seemed fairly rare, but now I think it's rarer for pubs not to take dogs. Or maybe I just spend less time in Kensington), with this marvellous coppery dog in front of the fire, who looked exactly like the dog that had just scooped Best of Breed.
So like any normal person, I approached the owner and remarked upon the likeness, and she said "that's her sister!" And we all got a huge glow of fellowship and serendipity and rejoicing in canine beauty. Behind the dog and the owner were a couple who had recently moved into the area called Madonna and Guy Ritchie. Which is to say, while I had been recognising the sibling of a dog, I had been failing to recognise the most famous pop singer in the world.
I don't think this is an accident. I think there's a lot more fun to be had from close attention to Crufts than there is from watching MTV.
